PeopleTalk: Promoting Conversation about Democracy

Abstract

Studies • volume 106 • number 423 329 PeopleTalk: Promoting Conversation about Democracy Edmond Grace SJ The elaborate bureaucracy of the modern state has become a barrier between elected leaders and ordinary citizens, yet within that barrier lie the means of restoring popular trust in public life.1 Democracy is in crisis and change is needed. Citizens Rising, a report to honour the centenary of 1916, calls for ‘an ongoing role for the people’ in addition to elections.2 The question is how to give this ongoing role concrete shape. This article is about PeopleTalk, an initiative which is attempting to develop such a structure. PeopleTalk is the outcome of a series of conversations which have included elected politicians, public servants at every level of management, and citizens from every part of the country. The Dialogue on Democracy Seminar (2003) The opening conversation in the story went under the name of the ‘Dialogue on Democracy Seminar’, which began in June 2003 and included five members of the Oireachtas, four senior public servants and nine leaders in the community and voluntary service. It took place in the Jesuit community house in Leeson Street and was chaired by Brendan Halligan, chairman of the Institute of International and European Affairs. The purpose was to critique a series of papers submitted by me and it led to the publication of a book, Democracy and Public Happiness, in 2007. As their deliberations came to an end, the seminar group requested the Oireachtas members to approach their respective leaders (Bertie Ahern, Michael McDowell, Enda Kenny, Pat Rabbite and Trevor Sargent) with a view to their signing a preface to the book. The jointly signed statement which resulted, and from which the quotation above comes, represented an endorsement of the seminar and its outcome at the highest level of national leadership. At this point the seminar had completed the task for which it had been set up. The members, however, had found that meeting in conversation with PeopleTalk: Promoting Conversation about Democracy 330 Studies • volume 106 • number 423 others of differing perspectives was worthwhile and an experience which might usefully be replicated. They were willing as a group to oversee a series of workshops around the country. I was instructed to recruit a team of facilitators and John Fitzgerald, a member of the seminar and then Dublin City Manager, put me in touch with some of his colleagues in local government. It turned out that ten local councils were willing to host a halfday workshop made up of twelve people – elected councillors, public servants and people from the community and voluntary sector. Each workshop would have a facilitator and a note-taker provided by the seminar. The question to be addressed was thought up by those of us who were to do the facilitation: ‘What makes people mad with public administration in this country today?’ The seminar group were happy with this proposed question and decided that it would serve well as a workshop topic. Groups of people in local council offices throughout the country were more than happy to spend an afternoon in what came to be known as ‘the mad workshops’. The process concluded with a plenary session funded by Dublin City Council in the Croke Park Conference Centre. People came from Cavan, Cork, Donegal, Dublin, Galway, Kerry, Limerick, Louth, Westmeath and Waterford to spend a day reflecting on their experience of ‘the mad workshops’ and wondering what should be done next. They came up with the following feedback: – The process was good. – More time was needed. – It should be kept at local level. – It should seek measurable outcomes. Somewhere around this time the facilitators had morphed into ‘the facilitation team’. They were pleased with the day and decided that the best way forward was to propose a local ‘jury’ network. Each jury would be made up of twelve people ‘of standing and credibility’, who knew what questions to ask and whom to approach for an answer. They would be appointed by the relevant County/City Development Boards with a view to generating local initiatives, comparing insights within regions and identifying country-wide patterns and needs. The objective was to bring about a change in attitudes ‘towards...